Edge of Midnight (28 page)

He looked at her in his deceptive, slow-witted way. “Don't know. No way to tell what she looked like.”

“Have you talked to the owner of this … this…?” She waved a hand up the crumbling building.

“Silo. Applegate sold out and went off and just left the wheat.” He scooped a handful of kernels and rolled it in his hand. “I'd say that's criminal.”

He let the grain trickle through his fingers, then brushed his hand against his pants. “Whoever she is, she's a city person. Farm people know to stay away from a silo. They'd never go in a rat hole.”

“Kelby Oliver owns the place now,” Susan said. “What do you know about her?”

“Not much. Moved in and kept the doors bolted.”

“Uh…” Ida took a step nearer.

Susan switched her attention to Ida, who quickly erased a guilty look. “What?”

“She has a stalker. Kelby. Ms. Oliver. I talked with her sister.”

“Who was stalking her?”

“Her sister doesn't know, but Kelby moved here to get away from him. He threatened to kill her.” Ida related what she'd learned from the real estate agent.

“Is this Kelby?” Susan gestured toward the body.

Ida shook her head. “Can't be. Whoever this is has been dead a while. I saw Kelby yesterday.”

“Where is she?”

“I don't know. I called where she works, but she was a no-show this morning.”

If a stalker was intent on killing Kelby, but Kelby was still alive, who ended up dead in the silo? A mistake? An accident? Practice?

Suddenly Ida gasped and reached for her gun. Susan turned to see what the problem was. Inside the silo, a huge black snake was gliding its way over the grain.

Osey, with a “what's your problem” look, pushed Ida's gun gently down. “Rat snake. Good guys. Good to have around. They keep the rodent population down. Probably wouldn't be a kernel left if it wasn't for these guys.”

Maybe not such a bad deal, Susan thought, then they wouldn't have to remove it grain by grain. She and Parkhurst went through the house but found nothing that gave away who Kelby Oliver was. No letters, no snapshots, no address book. A woman with no clutter of identity. Had she killed the person in the silo? Who was the dead woman, and why was she killed?

“Two people were living in this house,” Parkhurst said. “Clothes in one bedroom, personal things. Shoes, jumble in drawers, chest with socks and underwear. In the second bedroom, an item or two hanging in the closet, meager pile of clothing in a drawer. Stacks of books by the bed.”

Susan agreed. “Two toothbrushes in the bathroom. So, who is the second person?”

“Female. Friend, maybe?”

“Kelby wouldn't even let in visiting neighbors. It would have to be someone she knew. Maybe the guest is dead in the grain.”

“She's been dead for some days,” he said. “Why didn't Kelby report her missing? Wouldn't you go looking for your visiting friend if suddenly she didn't show up for dinner?”

“Unless the friend had told me she was leaving, packed up, and then was killed by someone lurking in the bushes.”

“Or because Kelby Oliver killed her.”

Susan had a bad feeling about this. “We need to find Kelby.”

 

35

Cary bobbed along like a swimmer just under the surface, until a shift of her body shot her to the surface. Her eyes opened to darkness. Blind, totally blind! What little vision she had, gone. A sob caught in her throat. The car made a turn and she rolled to her side. Shadows, she saw shadows. Not blind, getting dark.

“She was beautiful,” Joe was saying. “And smart. We got her first camera when she was twelve. Carried it everywhere, snapped everything. Started winning prizes. Then she wanted a place to develop the film. Nagged until I wanted to yell at her. She said the garage wasn't used much anyway. She spent hours making prints.”

Nausea tickled at Cary's throat. A thought crossed her mind. Throw up on him. That triggered another thought.

“I remember the night she was born like it was yesterday. The nurse put her in my arms, this warm little bundle all wrapped up. She was covered with chalky stuff and screaming her head off. I held her and looked at her and knew what pure love was. You know what I mean?”

Cary didn't. She'd loved Mitch before they'd married, but she'd never experienced anything like what Joe was talking about.

“That son of a bitch, that animal, killed her. Tortured her and killed her. Oh, God, he—” Joe's voice broke and anguish spilled through. “I hate to go to sleep. I hear her screaming. Calling to me.” His pain was so raw, the air was thick with misery.

“I went to the trial. Every damn day, I sat in that court room and listened to what he did to her. That monster! He sat there looking like a clean-cut college kid.”

His voice took on a thin edge. “Why'd you do it! Because you
could?
A power thing?”

Power? She'd never had any power in her life. She'd been a mouse who tried to be good, wanted people to like her. If he'd studied the jury, why couldn't he see he had the wrong woman?

“You were the only one. When it was over, I talked to the jury members. One woman cried. She apologized, said they tried to make you see, convince you to do the right thing.” He smacked the steering wheel. “You wouldn't.”

Ah. Now Cary understood. Kelby had been on the jury. “If you went to the trial every day, you saw the jury. Look at me. Can't you see I'm not Kelby?”

He grunted. “You tried to look different. I'll give you that. Did something to your hair. Lost some weight. It didn't fool me.”

She wouldn't even die under her own name.

“If you'd voted for the death penalty like all the others, we wouldn't be here.”

Cary nearly choked, on a sob, or a bark of laughter, it wasn't clear which. She was getting the death penalty for using a dead woman's identity. Kelby must be buried in all that grain. Who killed her? Obviously not Joe. Mitch? Why? He didn't even know her. Unless he thought she had helped Cary get away.

“Arlette?” she asked. Had Joe killed her?

“I didn't mean to hurt her. I'm sorry. She wouldn't tell me where you were.”

“My husband's a cop. He'll find us.”

“You're not married.”

Joe couldn't let it go. He'd invested too much of himself in revenge. Maybe, before tragedy struck, he'd been a nice, ordinary man, but his mind snapped when the jury didn't vote for the death penalty. California had a two-phased system, first the trial, then, if the defendant was found guilty, a second phase to determine sentencing.

“What about my body?” she said.

“You'll be beyond caring.”

She struggled to change her position, the pain in her left hip was becoming unbearable. Ha. If she couldn't even stand to lie on her side for any length of time, how did she expect to suffer torture?

“I have a sister. I don't want to simply disappear and have her wonder for the rest of her life. Her name is Sybil Pernich and—” The car hit a bump and she bit her tongue. “Please let her know I'm dead.”

“Shut up! Just shut up!”

She twisted and wriggled and struggled to hoist herself up on the seat. Breathing hard, ignoring the pain in her head, she got her feet under her and forced her knees to lift her. Falling forward against the seatback, she flung her arms over his head, taped wrists around his neck. She dropped to the floorboards, letting all her weight pull against his throat. He made a strangled yell. Clawed at her hands. The car swerved erratically.

He stomped the accelerator. The car screamed in a turn, skidded, and rocketed forward. Brush scraped the sides. The car hit something that sent it flying. It landed with a thud and kept going. He squealed around turns. She saw flashes of fencing, green pastures, dark sky. Crossroads. Oncoming car. She tensed. The car passed. How long, she thought desperately. How long does it take to strangle someone?

Forever. She was tossed from side to side, getting battered and more nauseated at each screaming turn. The car slid onto an unpaved road, skidded with a cloud of dust toward a parked car. Kaleidoscope of pain and colors. Tortured shriek of crushing metal. Huge black pain filled her mind.

The next thing she knew, Joe was crouched over her with a knife.

*   *   *

At four o'clock, an ominous dark twilight wiped out the afternoon sunshine. Susan, working at her desk, looked up with a start when the overhead light flicked on.

Parkhurst came in and set a laptop on her desk. “Weather.”

Oh-oh. That had a tone she didn't like.

He raised the lid and turned on the laptop. She watched a forecaster with a pointer touch a map with lines all over it. “… cold air dropping down from Canada and moving across a section of the Great Plains…”

“It's finally going to cool off?” she said.

“More than that.”

“… fine particles of dust picked up by rising air. Dust storm warnings for western Kansas…”

Hampstead was in the northeastern section of the state.

“Coming this way,” Parkhurst said, as though he'd read her thought.

“… the cold front saturated with dust will mix with the hot, dry air that has been suffocating the area for so long…”

Oh, shit.

“… cause a low-pressure system … whirling counterclockwise … warm air rising from the ground mixing with the cooler mass above.”

She looked at Parkhurst. He nodded. Oh shit.

“… indicating heavy rain, large hail, high winds, and tornadoes. Since midmorning, the National Weather Service has been tracking this system with radar and satellite. Dust storms and thunderstorm bulletins, at this time, are upgraded to include tornado watches. Local authorities are advised of the need for emergency situations.”

Just great. A homicide and now a tornado.

“… winds reaching eighty miles an hour and three- to four-inch hail…”

Her phone buzzed.

“Yes, Hazel.”

“Dr. Fisher just called. He's ready to do the autopsy on the silo victim.”

*   *   *

In the hospital basement, she walked a long, empty corridor with harsh overhead lights, cement walls painted white. The morgue had stainless steel cabinets, stainless steel tables, and a drain in the tiled floor. The body lay on a table, in such a state of decay, it wasn't recognizable as human. A mass of rotting flesh, greenish black, abdominal area distended, skin and hair missing, fingers, hands reduced to bones, facial area so bloated features were missing. Clothes had been removed, shreds of a yellow T-shirt and blue denim jeans. The smell was almost more than Susan could bare.

Dr. Fisher, in hospital scrubs, handed her a mask and she put it on, not that it did anything to dilute the smell. He grinned at her behind his mask. She wondered, as she had before, if he had some deficit in what he could smell. Nothing seemed to bother him. Floaters, bloaters, putrefaction, all seemed a puzzle he was privileged to solve.

“Looks like we're in for some weather.” He walked around the table and studied the body from all sides.

“How long has she been dead?” Susan asked.

He shot her a glance, the same one he always gave her when she asked that question. “Given the heat we've had, and the humidity, and the extent of decay, I'd guess at two weeks, give or take.” He turned on the microphone hanging over the table and stated the date, his name and qualifications, then her name and position, as being present. “The body is that of a female in a state of severe putrefaction…”

He made the Y incision through the rotted flesh and opened the chest. Susan had, long ago, stopped thinking of the individual on the table as human, only the focus of her job. He spoke for the recorder as he poked through shreds of muscle. Susan tried to breathe through her mouth. The last thing he did was remove the top of the skull. Goose bumps broke out on Susan's arms at the shrill shriek of the saw.

When he was finished, he stripped off his latex gloves and washed his hands in the deep sink. He ripped paper towels from the dispenser, turned to face her, and leaned against the cabinet as he dried his hands, then pulled down the mask until it rested under his chin.

“Only thing I can tell you for certain is the body is female. Cause of death…” He shrugged. “Too much putrefaction. I didn't find anything obvious, like a bullet. Close examination of the bones might show something like a nick from a stab wound, but I doubt it.”

He balled up the towels and tossed them in the trash container. “My guess is she died of asphyxiation. Not enough left of the lungs to tell. Poor lady. Terrible way to die. The pressure against her chest made it increasingly impossible to breathe. She couldn't expand her chest to pull in air. Slow death. Her last hours were excruciating.”

“How long did it take?”

“Four or five hours.”

Just thinking about it had Susan pulling air deep into her lungs. That brought in the heavy stench of decay and set off a fit of coughing.

“You don't sound so good. Maybe you ought to see a doctor.”

“Very funny. Send me a preliminary report.”

 

36

Knife in one hand, shotgun barrel in the other, Joe bent over her. To see if she was still breathing, Cary supposed. He moved from her sight. A moment later she heard the trunk lid slam. When he returned, he leaned the gun against the fender and sliced through the cord around her ankles. He yanked her to a sitting position and dragged her from the car. It was smashed up against a boulder in an empty field. Black clouds piled up in the sky, turning day into night. Wind tore at her hair and flung grit in her face.

He grabbed the gun—a rifle! He'd exchanged the shotgun for a rifle. What did that mean? Hand like a vise on her elbow, he jerked and shoved her up a slope. Two small cabins sat at the top, one on each end of the ridge, surrounded by trees whose branches whipped and twisted in the wind.